The Mouseion: Museum in the City, City in the Museum

Paris, France

The term museum is derived from the Greek word “mouseion” which means “Seat of the Muses” - the place where the mythical nine Greek goddesses resided. Each of these goddesses was dedicated to a particular aspect of culture, science or the arts and each was meant to be a source of inspiration for the artist, philosopher or other forms of intellectual pursuit. The term museum, therefore, was borne out of a collective gathering of cultural content, a place where multiple aspects of civilization resided to inspire visitors.

Yet, we have come to associate the museum in its current form with an iconic or landmark building. It is not uncommon, as well, that the contents within the museum are icons to be consumed, with troves of visitors snapping selfies in front of notable works and quickly moving on to the next icon. Perhaps nowhere else has this voracious and empty consumption of cultural icons become so rampant as in Paris, where the tourist occupation overruns the city to create the number one most visited destination on Earth, host to over 130 museums as part of its urban fabric today. Not only has the museum lost its core meaning, but one could say that Parisian culture has been converted to a collection of consumable icons, from the Eiffel Tower to the macaroon.

The thesis attempts to recapture the multi-faceted and rich nature of a lost Paris through a new type of museum - one that restores the original concept of The Mouseion as a network of inspirational and diverse cultural experiences. A collection of nine cultural relics that correspond to each of the disciplines represented by the original nine Greek muses are scattered throughout the city in a network interwoven with the city fabric. Each resides in a “Station Fantôme” - or one of several abandoned metro stations that exist within the Paris Metro - that is converted into a new programmatic experience to host the relic.

By submerging the museum underground at the site of nine abandoned metro stations, the project investigates the power and potential of decentralizing and dematerializing the museum and re-fertilizing the urban fabric with cornerstones of Parisian art and culture. It deliberately avoids the implementation of an icon to represent the museum so as not to contribute to the phenomenon of overt consumption even more. Instead, the proposal invites visitors to engage in a hunt through the subways to find the collection of cultural fragments, thereby piecing together a more true and authentic understanding of Paris.

Ironically, Paris’ city infrastructure has on several occasions been re-appropriated into museum space (Musée d’Orsay was originally a train station), suggesting a link between the transportation network of the city and the real presence of Parisian culture.